Sara Stern
STALL
July 19–September 7, 2025
Opening reception Saturday, July 19, 2025, 3–5 PM
Sara Stern stages a site-specific mise en abyme in her latest exhibition, STALL. Responding to the interstitial space of TURLEY’s Light Well, Stern draws on dioramas, window displays, and works of art in which a viewer is made to peep in on a space. Stern’s STALL recasts this liminal space as a horse stall-cum-horseshoe crab theater.
Sara Stern, The end, 2025, Polaroid photograph, 4.2 x 3.5 inches
A horseshoe crab watches the spawning of its species in a narrow horse stall. This is a show as old as the dinosaurs. The horseshoe crab, often referred to as a “living fossil,” is among the oldest species on Earth. By stalling, the horseshoe crab survived. Some people seem to think that survival is very important. To still is a synonym for stall. Some stalls contain urinals; others, hay. Some stalls sell vegetables; others, jewels. Some people use stall tactics; others stall inadvertently. A stall is a place where a horse goes when it’s “off-duty.” Stall vices might develop, out of boredom, out of necessity. “Stall: to play for time: DELAY.”
Sara Stern, They say everything must begin over again, 2025, Polaroid photograph, 4.2 x 3.5 inches
SARA STERN is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her recent projects prod varied histories of landscape and urban development with speculative fiction. She works between and across multimedia performance, moving image installation, sculpture, architectural intervention, and animation.
Stern has exhibited and screened her work in the US and internationally, at venues including SculptureCenter (Long Island City, NY), Essex Flowers (New York, NY), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Anthology Film Archives (New York, NY), the Museum of the Moving Image (New York, NY), The Jewish Museum (New York, NY), and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (Singapore). Stern received a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She is the recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, the Fountainhead Fellowship in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University, and several residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. In recent years, Stern has participated in The Watermill Center Artist Residency Program (Water Mill, NY), the Fire Island Artist Residency (Cherry Grove, Fire Island, NY), and the New Works Artist in Residence program at Harvestworks (New York, NY).
Sound mix by Quentin Chiappetta
Special thanks to Jay Critchley, Adam Liam Rose, Cassie Packard, and the Fine Arts Work Center
Installation photography courtesy of the artist and Spencer House Studio